GM Giant Killing

In the past week there have been a lot of Gm giant killings from lower rated players in over the board competitions. From a 1800 beating a 2500 to a 2300 beating a 2600. Lets have a look at them and see what big tips we can learn so that we can replicate their victory in our own games.

If you prefer video of the games/more in-depth thoughts of mine GM Giant Killing - YouTube

To quote a well known Hogwarts professor Constant Vigilance! A Grandmaster is fully capable of missing tactical blows even in slowplay fide competitions. 11 year old Bodhana found b4! v her 2630 fide opponenet to gain a nice scalp .

Safe and Steady play is however also another way to subtly put pressure on a GM to take risks. Here young Italian talent defeats former world top 10 and still 2600+ English GM Micky Adams . What I found interesting here is that he plays into a drawish line and goads normally solid Adams into too many provocative pawn moves. He then ruthlessly exploits the mistake to pick up a great victory

Sometimes you have to be as solid as you can be and hope the better player has an off day. You also have to hope for a little bit of good fortune. Here an 1800 faces GM Simon Williams and skillfully keeps things as simple as possible, swapping off all the material he can. Now eventually he did succumb to allowing a clear win (nc4)...but Simon missed it! To compound that miss the charismatic ginger GM got confused with the time control and allowed his time to run out in a equal ending.

Sometimes it can pay off however to be original and a bit unsound v a booked up orthodox GM opponent. Here talented junior Stanley Badasconyi had a really creative plan of e4 and f4-f5-f6 push in a normal catalan position. Despite it being objectively better for his gm opponent he came out on top in the complications.

All in all I think there are 3 main takeaways from these games if you face a stronger player.

1. They can and will make tactical errors..so remain watchful and ready for any blunder they could make.
2. Keep things simple in the opening to limit your potential blunders and make it harder for them to outplay you. This could potentially tempt them to risk too much ...where you can seize on this and win
3. Have a positive mindset..grandmasters can lose on time etc

Cheers for reading